‘At key moments Labour has never known where it stood on Europe.’
Illustration: Noma Bar

No one knows where Labour stands on Brexit. That’s a great cliche of the moment. But like most cliches it is true. Labour is for and against free movement. Labour is for full access to the single market and against full access to the single market. Labour will not block article 50 but some of its MPs will vote against. On Europe Labour is in a deep crisis.

But here is the twist. At key moments Labour has never known where it stood on Europe. The current incoherent division is not freakishly new. Instead it is part of a pattern. In the early 1970s half of Labour’s frontbench was passionately in favour of the UK joining the EEC and the other half was unswervingly against, with titans on either side of the debate.

Similarly in the mid- to late 1990s the Labour leadership was all over the place in relation to the single currency. Tony Blair was in favour and Gordon Brown was against. Gordon Brown was in favour and Tony Blair was against. Robin Cook was passionately opposed and then passionately in favour. Blair declared his love for the pound and then suggested his historic mission was to join the euro. He mocked John Major for agreeing to a referendum on the euro and then offered a referendum on the euro.

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There is, though, a very big difference between now and these earlier, equally incoherent, splits. The current situation is transparent and without obvious resolution – leadership of a divided party over an emotive and complex issue demands subtle, strategic evasiveness disguised as strength of purpose and direction.

Senior figures say publicly what they believe in relation to Brexit, which is dangerous, or they are too unsubtle in their pathetic, clunky attempts at evasiveness.

To his credit, as a principled individual Jeremy Corbyn could not dissemble if he tried. Asking Corbyn to dissemble is the equivalent of asking him to captain Arsenal in a cup final. The demand is out of his orbit. He was a backbencher from 1983 until he became leader, voting always out of personal conviction. There was a dark fascination watching him earlier this month struggling to stick to a agreed line, that Labour was not “wedded to free movement”. He could not keep to the script for more than an hour or two because he believes in free movement. At the same time he cannot convey enthusiasm for the single market because he is not an enthusiast and is incapable of pretence.

But Corbyn no longer speaks as an individual with convictions. He is the leader of a divided party. In a BBC interview in the late 1980s Neil Kinnock was asked: “As leader of your party what is your personal view of unilateral nuclear disarmament?” Without hesitation Kinnock replied: “Being leader of the Labour party and having a personal view is a contradiction in terms.” Kinnock was highlighting the nightmarish, but unavoidable constraints of leadership.

Take a look at Labour’s earlier shambolic positions in relation to Europe. It had leaders with the skill and experience to dissemble and to give the impression of clear direction when there was none. The skill was a precondition to survival and success, not an added extra.

In the first half of the 1970s, leading a party more intensely split than now, Harold Wilson managed to win two elections and a referendum on the UK’s membership of the EEC. He did so by twisting and turning like a gyrating dancer, but he knew what he was doing.

Unlike Corbyn, he had faced the demands of leadership for many wearying years and by instinct his priority was to keep his party together while reaching a policy goal in the end. Wilson voted against joining the EEC in key Commons votes before Britain finally joined in 1973 because that was the majority position in his party. Subsequently he held a referendum and argued in favour of membership after a “renegotiation”. Unlike David Cameron, he won. Towards the end of his leadership an exhausted Wilson told Barbara Castle that he had “waded through shit” to keep his party together on Europe and to keep the UK in the EU. He more or less managed both.

Blair was a very different political personality but also a conjuror. In the buildup to the 1997 general election he tormented John Major over the government’s divisions in relation to the euro and Major’s inability to clarify where he stood. “I lead my party. You follow yours,” was Blair’s famous taunt. The media swooned.

Yet Blair’s position was precisely the same as Major’s. He might join the euro and he might not. The difference was that he conveyed a dynamic sense of purpose. There were the five tests in relation to joining the euro. He would lead in Europe. Few noticed the great, gaping cracks in Labour’s position. The entire focus was on the gaping cracks in the government.

The same dynamic could apply now. It is Theresa May who faces the hell of a complex and arduous negotiation with a parliamentary party that foams at the mouth when Europe is mentioned. Yet she is the one who torments Corbyn, mocking him at prime minister’s questions today for leading a party “that can’t speak for themselves and will never speak for Britain”. She is the one who could joke that each Labour frontbencher took a different position from all the others. May has long experience of politics at or near the top. She conveys a sense of resolute purpose, even though she cannot have a clue how Brexit will work out because no one has a clue.

Strategically smart dissembling is not an alternative to conviction. Together in their ruthlessly disciplined pragmatism these different leaders, Wilson and Blair, got to the right place in the end: the UK in the EEC and out of the euro. Europe is the worst possible issue to top the agenda for Labour’s current leadership. Corbyn and his similarly inexperienced senior colleagues are amateurs at this form of politics.

As they stick to their principles on Brexit or dissemble hopelessly they languish in the polls. If there is a vacancy for the leadership in the coming years the dysfunctional Labour party urgently needs an experienced, principled dissembler at the helm. Without such a leader Europe threatens to tear it apart, not because it is more divided now than in the past but because it is more obviously split. The transparency of the shapeless chaos is what threatens to kill it as a political force.